Counting On fans love going through every Instagram post from the Duggar family with a fine-toothed comb, and the photos Jessa (Duggar) Seewald has shared of her new baby Ivy Jane are no different.
On June 8, Jessa shared a gallery of photos of Ivy, including a pair with the newborn showing off her gorgeous big blue eyes. The vast majority of fans were overwhelmed by Ivy’s cuteness, but one fan found an issue with Ivy’s eyes.
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“She’s so cute. But What’s the red ring around the color of her right eye (left one if looking at the pic)?” one fan wrote, notes Cheat Sheet.
Several other fans were quick to answer the question, providing their own hypotheses.
“My kids has it too. It is from delivery. It will go away after a while. It can take a while,” one fan wrote.
“A hemorrhage it looks like. It’s very common for a baby to get during birth. My daughter had one too. It goes away quickly,” another added.
While it is not clear what – if any – conditions Ivy has, Birth Injury Guide notes that a bright red or dark red patch in the white areas of an infant’s eye is a common symptom of a subconjunctival hemorrhage.
A subconjunctival hemorrhage is “a medical condition that happens when the small blood vessels located just beneath the eye ruptures. Although it can happen at any age, it typically happens to newborn infants when trauma occurs during a stressful delivery,” according to Birth Injury Guide. The site notes there is no treatment for it, as it typically clears up on its own within a few weeks.
Ivy’s eyes were not the only red flag for concerned fans. On May 28, Jill (Duggar) Dillard shared photos of Ivy, who appears to have very red skin. One fan even suggested Ivy looked purple.
“I keep looking at the photos. She’s a doll. But is she ok? She looks purple. I’m not saying anything mean. Just hoping she’s ok,” the fan wrote.
Other fans asked why Ivy looked so red.
“Because babies are red when they are born, her coloring will settle down in the next few days. It’s common,” one fan wrote, while another added, “because she’s getting plenty of oxygen. We want babies very pink to red.”
Ivy Jane was born at home on May 26. She joins Jessa and Ben Seewald’s other children, sons Spurgeon, 3, and Henry, 2.
While the Duggar family usually picks names with Biblical or religious links, the Seewalds broke tradition with Ivy’s name.
“Ivy Jane. We just liked those two names, Jessa and I talked about it beforehand this time around,” Seewald explained in a video on the family’s website. “We actually had a name picked out before she was born. We liked the way those names flowed together and with her middle name, Jane, she’s actually named after Lady Jane Grey, who was a young lady who was queen of England for a short time during the 1500s. She’s a very inspirational character to us.”
Counting On is expected to return this fall on TLC.
Photo credit: Instagram/Jessa (Duggar) Seewald
